Modernistic Themes in Tess of D'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy's works are considered to have"contained new wine in an old bottle"by critics and reviewers. The"old bottle"refers to his authorial omniscient narrative and his form inheriting from the tradition, which is often criticized, especially by those modernists, while"new wine"designates his other sides apart from his old-fashioned writing style, the modernistic themes in his writing. Tess, is a novel that records the transition from conventional to modern. By reading the text and analyzing Tess of the D'Urbervilles under the social context three main modernistic themes can be probed out:Firstly, the spiritual isolation and loneliness in the novel are apparent, and the lack in mutual understanding and sympathy between each other is universal. Besides, the title heroine, she was impossible to fulfill her dreams with various hostile powers set against her, coercing into predicaments one after another, tougher and tougher. Furthermore, another theme popular with later modernists, the alienation, is also embodied in the novel.